


In Triplicate

by orpheus_under_starlight



Category: Naruto
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2018-12-30 00:03:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12096333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orpheus_under_starlight/pseuds/orpheus_under_starlight
Summary: Prior to Izumi Chie, the only person in Konohagakure to be as much of a hardass about paperwork was the Nidaime himself.





	1. Chapter 1

**In Triplicate**

Prior to Izumi Chie, the only person in Konohagakure to be as much of a hardass about paperwork was the Nidaime himself.

-

It starts when she’s in the Academy.

Nakajima-sensei is boring as sin, the children are loud and noisy, and Chie?

Chie knows it all already. She didn’t go through sixteen years of formal education for nothing, dammit, and even if she still has trouble with theoretical physics, how the hell is she going to remember to calculate a kunai’s trajectory in the heat of the moment? She’s smart, but she’s not _Hatake Kakashi._ She doesn’t have a mind for numbers, or even for history dates. Who needs to know what year Senju Hashirama first met Uchiha Madara on the field of battle if you know it was the turning point of the Warring Clans Era and you’re entirely capable of writing a dissertation on its ramifications leading down to today? Even if you probably shouldn’t be able to? No, wait— _especially_ though she probably shouldn’t be able to.

“Chie-kun,” Nakajima-sensei says, drawing her attention back to the present. The children all stare at her with an indefinable look; the mid-morning light filters in lazily through the great tall windows favored by the Academy, and Chie’s hands are tiny and pale and delicate. She hates them. Nakajima-sensei smiles, and the fine lines around his eyes crinkle with it. His eyes are a warm brown she hasn’t seen anywhere else in Konoha. A part of her wonders where he’s descended from, but the rest of her remembers that open anthropology is frowned-upon in a society that relies upon controlling the information flow and shuts that line of inquiry down. For the moment. “Would you care to answer the question?”

Chie smiles back, equal parts bland and unapologetic, and some of her classmates look disappointed at the lack of embarrassment. Serves them right, the little monsters. “My apologies, sensei. May I hear the question again?”

“Indeed. The question was this: what did the honorable Senju Tobirama say when he founded the Department of Intelligence and Investigation?”

_“’Without bureaucracy, the state cannot survive,’”_ Chie quotes, eyes sliding mutinously in the direction of the window again, far more entranced by the way the leaves of the tree outside create intriguing patterns of shadow and light—gossamer threads of hope protruding from the bright spring green, or so the poet Tanaka would’ve said. “Though a fairly simple sociopolitical statement, there are no records of this thought process prior to the honorable Senju Tobirama’s declaration. The continent was far too devastated during the Warring Clans Era for prior histories to have survived, which weighed heavily on his mind, and led him to record many of his thoughts on the matter for his brother’s benefit.”

Nakajima-sensei smiles, openly pleased for a fraction of a second, and the rest of her classmates just seem boggled. But then something sharper enters his eyes, a cunning that abruptly reminds her of the truth of the world she now inhabits. There is a challenge in his gaze—a challenge and a warning. “Very good, Chie-kun. I see you’ve been reading ahead in the textbook. Perhaps you’d like to move on to more advanced learning, hm?”

“I still have much to learn, sensei, though I am honored by your consideration,” Chie says carefully, bowing her head deeply. She may be younger than the usual student, with her frame too small to be able to use the Academy-style taijutsu styles with complete comfort and her absentmindedness matched only by her acute attention to detail, but she is no Hatake Kakashi, and she knows that the Academy teachers have been watching her—considering her, evaluating her progress. It isn’t often that a clanless orphan displays such potential, no matter what the honorable Jiraiya of the Sannin has most recently espoused in his first published novel.

(He is too idealistic, they say. He will bring the new generation to ruin. They will dream not of kunai and survival but of peace and a plowshare. How can we allow this? We are at war. —And so the book dies a quiet death. She has a copy. She’ll never, ever lose it.)

Izumi Chie knows better. She knows better than the Hokage does.

The thought nearly makes her want to laugh, then cry. If anyone, she can appreciate the acute irony of the statement; the Hokage most certainly knows _more_ than she does, being something like a bajillion years old compared to her supposed six, but there is something about her that neither he nor anyone in the entire shinobi governmental structure could ever possibly guess at that makes the idea of progressing before she’s gotten some physical training remarkably unpalatable. Ninja just aren’t wired for it, trained to think as they are of practicalities and realities and how ideas relate to the physical.

How could they ever believe that reincarnation is more than just a religious idea about what comes after, a vague abstraction with no real bearing on their present reality? How could they even begin to comprehend the possibility that a soul older than the most ancient of their legends, from a world beyond their longest, most faded myths, might’ve possibly crossed between the intangible and the tangible without noticing until it’d been too late to return?

“We will discuss this further,” says Nakajima-sensei without any discernible positive or negative reaction, bringing her back to reality. “For now, class, let’s finish up with a discussion. Okonogi-kun, Wakisa-kun—you two start.”

Chie fingers her wispy, short brown hair absently, already staring at the window.

-

Izumi Chie is a quiet child.

They snoop, as all ninja do, and they call it _collecting information._ Izumi Chie’s mother died on mission a week before her daughter’s sixth birthday, saving Hatake Sakumo from having his spinal cord severed. Her father was never in the picture. She has no friends and she spent the first three months of her sixth year with her nose buried in history books, chakra theory, and almost all the poetry contained in the Konoha General Library.

A Yamanaka, when informed about this, hemmed and hawed for a little while, then finally said that while the subject matter wasn’t exactly typical for a six-year-old, he had known her highly literate mother and Chie’s instinctive reaction to isolate herself from all outside influences would only be a concern if she remained lost in her own mind. It made sense that she went to books; likely, it was her way of feeling connected to her deceased mother.

The Yamanaka joined the nosy ninja— _observation team,_ and somehow keeping track of clanless orphans begins to become the local past-time for the T &I department (because nobody calls it The Department of Intelligence and Investigation any more). By the time Izumi Chie is seven years old, she and the dozen other clanless orphans in the Academy system have a whole cadre of silent caretakers psychoanalyzing their development. (And Hatake Kakashi’s—but their interest in him is at least half because they know it’s going to be hell and a half to get the kid into the Psych department when he inevitably needs an evaluation, and T&I collectively lives for the pain of the psych-nins. Hey, they’re at war—they’ve got to let the stress out somehow.)

Chie is by far the most intriguing to their minds; she is a cagey one, even by shinobi standards, and after a week spent in the library she comes out with an alarmingly self-satisfied look and a self-constructed cipher seemingly drawn from the multiple books on animal husbandry back in the dustiest, most mind-numbing part of the library—it looks like chicken scratch, anyways, one Yamanaka Inoichi tells the head of T&I, shaking his head at his coworkers’ fascination with all Konoha’s orphans.

After that, Chie writes. And writes and writes and writes and _writes_ , all with a pensive look on her face, keeping all her indecipherable papers in the toy safe her mother gave her on her fifth birthday. Oh, she does what other, more normal children do as well—she trains a little and plays nice with any workmates she’s required to have in the Academy, though she seems to regard her peers with a world-weary disdain learned only through an intolerance for loud children; she goes out to dango stalls and takoyaki stands and a particular ramen stand in the market district she seems to hold a distinct fondness for and chats with the strangers she meets while she’s there, politely inquiring about the weather and their crops and their families until they become acquaintances and then strange half-friends, all as the fascinated Yamanaka watches.

_Look,_ her actions seem to say to her watchers. _I exist, even if it’s not in your paradigms. This is my way to live. It is strange and different, but I am just fine._

And of course that’s no way to make a ninja leave you alone, because habits mean predictability and predictability makes you an easy target.

This is why, when the Sandaime chooses to de-stress himself by meeting earlier in the year with those among his future shinobi who have no family to look after them, a seven-and-a-half-year-old Izumi Chie sits calmly on the visitor’s chair in the Hokage’s office and smiles when Sarutobi inquires after her continued patronage of dusty little Ichiraku’s on the corner of Hashirama Street.

“I made a friend, Hokage-sama,” Chie says after a moment of thoughtful contemplation. “Her name is Kushina. She told me that she was a clone, and then she disappeared in a cloud of smoke. I looked clone up in the library and found that it’s technically called a bunshin. She said it’s a special kind of bunshin—kage bunshin. If it’s a kage bunshin, Hokage-sama, couldn’t it stand in for a -kage if needed? It would certainly help with the paperwork.”

Hiruzen freezes for a fraction of a second and ignores the way his ANBU are caught between a horrible desire to laugh and the utter brilliance of the idea. “…My,” he says, recovering admirably. “That is certainly an interesting train of thought, Chie-chan.”

Chie inclines her head. A hint of a smile plays about her lips. “You are too kind, Hokage-sama.”

“You are quite considerate. Now, I do think you will have to get home before it turns dark—may the Will of Fire go with you, Chie-chan, and do not forget: all of Konoha is with you. If you find yourself in need of aid, do not hesitate to ask your teachers or a responsible adult.”

“Thank you for your time, Hokage-sama.” Chie hops off the chair and bows respectfully to the old man, amusement evident at his last sentence, though she voices nothing about it. Sarutobi double-checks that she is comfortable with the chuunin teenager that escorted her to the Tower; when there is nothing distrustful in Chie’s face as she nods at Suki Mebuki, he files the reaction away for later examination.

Much, much later. He has a war to coordinate, and the stacks of paperwork aren’t getting any thinner.

…Though the idea of using kage bunshin really is brilliant.

-

Izumi Chie graduates the Academy at age eight, squarely in the middle of the class rankings despite Nakajima-sensei’s thinly-veiled attempts to get her to consider a jump-start to her shinobi career.

_The career I didn’t really want? The one that I was forced into when the woman who birthed this body died?_ she half-thinks of saying with a dry stare, but in Konohagakure, your voice is only important insofar as it exists to contribute to the advancement of the village and the Hokage. Personal opinions—personal feelings—do no matter. The world is at war, and feelings died with the first man who was impaled by a katana to save Hatake Sakumo from certain death by Iwa-nin.

Quite a man, that Hatake Sakumo. Out there on the front lines, fighting even though he could’ve taken leave before Chie was old enough to retain information and still be left with plenty to spare, in memory of the comrades who died for him.

Idly, Chie wonders how Hatake Kakashi feels about that. He’d graduated the same year she’d been entered into the Academy, been placed with an individual jonin-sensei, and has since been sighted around the village by various gossipy housewives and stallkeepers and chuunin (all equally nosy and unsubtle in their methods) doing things like training puppies, repairing fences, and learning jutsu under one Namikaze Minato. He’s certainly been busy. Busy enough to have very little time to think about a father absent in his desperation for atonement.

“Oi, Izumi.” It’s a child’s voice, and the words are squeaked out in an imitation of the growl the boy will one day grow up to have. Chie blinks and looks Morino Ibiki in the eye unflinchingly. Behind him lingers a quiet boy with dark hair and thick eyebrows, looking at her with a thoughtful expression that makes her wary. Ibiki, young and unscarred (for God’s sake, he still has _hair_ —completely nondescript hair that is perfectly cut and partitioned at the side) jabs a thumb in Gai’s direction. “You’re with us. C’mon.”

“Oh, they announced the teams already?” Chie asks, not moving. She has bowed to enough whims in her memories; she is not particularly inclined to do so further if the person requiring it is not the Hokage. Leaders are different. Little boys whose skulls are soft and unmarked by the lingering shadows of monster-men are not.

Ibiki examines her with renewed interest. Unexpected. He’s silent for a moment as Gai comes to stand beside him. Then—“Did you ever really need to listen?”

“Did you?” she returns, smiling. This is a game she knows well.

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Chie-san, Ibiki-san,” Gai says, drawing their attention. He holds up his lunchbox. It is the essence of manliness: lovingly-forged tin with bold, sharp grooves and rifts where the metal has been carved into shapes like the Konoha symbol and a Hashirama tree and… a pair of goggles? “Please, let us partake of the joy of sustenance together, that we might be filled and prepared to meet our jounin-sensei when it is time.”

Chie stares at him for a long, long moment; Gai stares back, patient. Slowly, she smiles. Lesser men would be intimidated by the way the tiny, pale, green-eyed eight-year-old pins the two of them with a look that could be comparable to a cat recognizing a new source of entertainment. “Don’t be so formal,” she tells him, standing. “If we’re a team now, we will need to be familiar with each other.”

“That’s right.” Ibiki folds his arms over his thin chest. “Did you have a place in mind, Gai?”

“…Yes. Yes, I did,” Gai says, a smile of his own finding its way to his face.

-

“Sorry, what?” Chie says more than she asks, staring at her jounin-sensei.

“Hello,” says Hatake Sakumo, looking more tired than anything else, but he tries to smile regardless. Nobody in the clearing is fooled. “It’s a pleasure to meet you three. I’ll be your jounin-sensei, starting today.”

Chie turns accusing eyes to the Hokage, who most definitely, absolutely, unequivocally got the wrong idea from how much she talked about the Hatakes when he last called her in to discuss her new status as a shinobi and what that meant for her orphan stipend and what her options were now. Normally she’d be more respectful, considering exactly who the man is, but at the present moment—no, no, no. Ibiki and Gai she could handle. But this? Not _this._

“The war has to end at some point, Chie-chan,” Sarutobi tells her, looking far too self-satisfied for a man who has just _ruined her life._

Sakumo flinches. Both of them pretend not to notice.

“…Hokage-sama…”

Sarutobi actually chuckles. Damn him. “Now, now, Chie-chan. I know you’re shy, but shouldn’t you be a little more excited about meeting your hero?”

Chie splutters, flushing red. Ibiki looks like he’s seen the universe tip itself over on its head; Gai blinks once and nods, like this makes sense. Sakumo… Sakumo just looks boggled. _“Hokage-sama!”_

“Have fun,” Sarutobi says genially, like the kind old man he most definitely has no right to pretend he is. “I do believe I have paperwork to attend to.”

She wants to die. Disappear, melt into a puddle, use that one go-underground-forever jutsu, whatever—just to be anywhere other than right here, stuck with Hatake Sakumo and her inevitable involvement in a changed world from the one she knows. _Dammit, Hokage-sama._

So much for a quiet life. So much for not getting involved beyond her semi-unwilling acquaintanceship with Kushina because the idea of a clanless eight-year-old being able to influence anything was lunacy. Everything changed before she knew enough to have any sort of choice in the matter, and that’s just damn unfair, is what it is. What’s going to be next—an unwilling adoption by the Uchiha clan?

Something in her shrivels up and dies at the thought. _No, no, no,_ she repeats to herself, feeling in her bones the acute awkwardness of the silence the Hokage has left in his wake. _That’s ridiculous. I’ve never even spoken with a Uchiha that—_

_—that wasn’t… Obito…_

Uchiha Obito, who had been paired with her on a class assignment for a grand total of five minutes before deciding that he was going to get her to talk to him, no matter what.

_Oh, hell. The village is huge. How is it so small?_

“…So,” Sakumo says, clearing his throat. “Why don’t we go around and introduce ourselves? I am Hatake Sakumo, kenjutsu user and your jounin-sensei. You… Maito, yes? Let’s start with you.”

Gai grins, a megawatt smile Chie has been subconsciously waiting to see for the two years she’s known him. “Yes, sensei! I am Maito Gai, interested in genjutsu and taijutsu! I am your genin subordinate!”

“Morino Ibiki. Long-range fighter, or assassination techniques. I’m a genin now.”

Chie resists the urge to throw herself on the ground and protest the cruel, unrelenting nature of the universe as all three males present look at her curiously. Instead, she squares her shoulders and looks Sakumo in the eye, _daring_ him to take issue with her. “Izumi Chie. Prospective kenjutsu user. Also a genin. We’ll be in your care, sensei.”

“Well, then. I guess we should get started,” Sakumo says, and though he is a jounin, though he is very, very good, he really can’t help the brief look that flashes across his face—the look that says _I would rather do anything else in the world at this exact moment than be here and awake and alive._

When Ibiki and Gai exchange looks and give Chie an expectant glance, she realizes that this is not going to be a standard genin team experience. In the _least._ The part of her that’s done with protesting actually perks up in interest—finally, something interesting—and as she thinks about it, the view begins to grow on her. A bit like a weed, really.

This isn’t the Academy. This isn’t thinly veiled threats and total disinterest in subject matter she’d known before she could walk. Her hands might be small and she might be eight years old and looking to be as depressingly short and tiny as she was in a world before living memory, but perhaps this can be something more than just a path she must be coaxed along by the fettering hands of fate. It might be Hatake Sakumo standing there and not someone as generic as she’d hoped, but people aren’t things, pieces on a board, and before them is a man broken enough to be unable to hide it from normal eight-year-olds.

And the Hokage, perceptive as he is, had to know exactly what he was doing when he put three children together that have been individually noted for their propensity for psychoanalyzing everyone they meet.

“So,” she says, crossing her arms with a confident smile, deciding to play the role of spokesperson to the hilt—if that’s what they want her to do. “What’s first?”

She’s been handed an opportunity on a silver platter. Like hell is she going to waste another life.


	2. Chapter 2

"Gai," Ibiki starts, stops, and sighs.

Chie looks at Gai's hopeful face; he's small, sure, but he has just as much heart as the man he will one day become. She grimaces. "Gai…"

"It could work," Gai says, eyes alight with righteous passion.

"Sensei's kind of broken, Gai," Chie says, crossing her arms. "The kind of broken that makes the fact that he shows up every day to train us a miracle in and of itself."

"And Kakashi's a bastard," Ibiki adds, leaning back in his seat.

Chie rolls her eyes.  _"Thank you,_  Ibiki."

"I'm just telling it like it is."

"There's a difference between being truthful and adding information that isn't helpful to the situation. Besides, I'm fairly certain Sensei was married to the woman that birthed Kakashi-san." She takes a bite of her dango to avoid saying more, like maybe  _and besides, you're kind of a surly bastard for an eight-year-old, were you always that way or do you have a difficult family situation that led to that,_  or possibly  _look, this is just like how you avoid all the Uchihas involved in their clan politics, you can tell them from a mile away by the sticks up their asses and you know I'm right,_  or even  _I can fix Sakumo but if you want us to fix Sakumo and Kakashi you do realize we'll spend at least half our lives on that?_ —because after all, she likes to live up to her principles.

And besides, what does it even mean to  _fix_  someone? She's using their definitions and their perspective because she doesn't exactly have much of an explanation for how she knows all the other stuff aside from that period when she'd spent every waking moment reading, but as far as she can tell, Sakumo needs intensive professional counseling before he could even begin to address the very obvious rift between him and his son.

Kakashi lives with the Maitos. Gai hasn't told him that Sakumo is their sensei yet, and it's been two months.

That aside—Sakumo needs counseling that may or may not even exist. If it does, she'd bet money on it being inaccessible to him because it'd be seen as a mark of weakness in this military dictatorship that prides itself on the strength, physical and mental, of its most prized shinobi… and Sakumo is a prize for them, there is no doubt about that. It isn't often that someone as skilled as one of the legendary Sannin is around, for all Konoha seems to be seeing an influx of remarkably capable shinobi.

_Careful,_  she thinks to herself.  _Already getting protective, are you?_

"Chie!"

She looks up. Gai and Ibiki are both looking at her with clear exasperation; she swallows her dango and speaks. "What?"

"Were you listening?" Ibiki asks, stone-faced. His dark eyes are black pits from which no light shines. The kid will do excellently in T&I whenever the Yamanaka realize his potential, that's for sure.

"No," she says blandly. "I was busy thinking about Sensei's issues."

"A shinobi must always be aware of their surroundings," Ibiki tells her.

She smiles. "A shinobi must  _also_  always be polite in the presence of strangers, and aren't you wonderful at  _that?"_

Ibiki just snorts, unimpressed, while Gai looks between them with a frown. "Please, let's not argue."

"We're not—never mind. What did I miss?" Chie asks, absently tucking her hair away from her eyes. She really should get it trimmed again—it's getting to the point where it just enters her field of vision, and that's been a distraction in training. Distractions are bad, even if they're arguments with an eight-year-old, which is more fun than it really should be. Ibiki's a smart, vicious child, and she always did appreciate those that appreciated sarcasm.

"I believe it will ultimately benefit Sensei," Gai says, leaning forward. "I am aware that we are young, but he has begun to smile at times while training us, and he is visiting the Memorial Stone frequently."

A _nd you believe that you can get him to start speaking to your father again,_  she thinks but doesn't say. "Do we need to be doing more than what we're already doing? I doubt we could ever… mm, no, it's not even worth mentioning."

Gai tilts his head thoughtfully. "I do not know if we can do more without Sensei noticing. But I think we must try, for Sensei's sake…"

"…And for Kakashi-san's," Chie finishes, lips twitching in something that barely resembles a smile. "Gai, you're too kind. You do realize this is going to take us years?"

"No kidding. What a pain," Ibiki sighs.

Gai looks between them. A small smile finds its way to his face. "You have my deepest and utmost gratitude, Ibiki-kun, Chie-chan."

"Well, we have our entire lives ahead of us. However short," Chie mumbles, then stands on the bench so the waiter will be able to see her signal for the check. The benefit to being cute and small: the waiter, a remarkably androgynous-looking man, smiles in amusement and gives her a conspiratorial thumbs-up. She looks from Gai to Ibiki. "So… if that's the case, we're going to have to start doing more… team things."

Ibiki grumbles something under his breath that neither Chie nor Gai bother to acknowledge.

"I am open to any suggestions," Gai says, then frowns. "Aside from perhaps inviting Sensei to my home. I do not think that would be a good idea at this stage."

"Treat it like a mission," Chie tells Ibiki.

Ibiki shrugs, looking up from where he's been fiddling with something under the table, and shoves a few ryo notes to the middle of the table. "Here. For my portion."

"Well, I might know someone who could give us some ideas," Chie says, placing her own ryo with Ibiki's. "I'll have to introduce myself, though."

"What?" Both of them are looking at her strangely. She grins, having forgotten how much fun it is to mess with kids.

"I'll have to introduce myself. They have been watching me since I was about six, after all."

When neither of them looks satisfied by this explanation, she snickers, stands, and leaves with a wave. She's got to start doing some real planning, after all, especially if she wants to convince Sakumo to train her in kenjutsu.

* * *

"Hi. You've been watching me."

It is not, as conversation starters go, the most delicate or polite opener from someone who has decided to ruin someone else's day by intercepting them in their favorite restaurant. The Yamanaka chokes on his lunch; his buddies stare first at her then at him, and after a moment, the other Yamanaka—Inoichi, if she isn't mistaken—reaches over and pats the man on the back with too much amusement to be entirely sympathetic. "There, there, Inoki."

"I what," Inoki coughs, looking down at her. "You— _how—"_

Chie crosses her arms. "I observe," she says, droll, resting her weight on the back of her feet and tipping her jaw up to look at him down the line of her nose. "I am observant. And I know about the betting pool."

Inoichi blinks, giving the dark-haired man with a raw, angry scar across his face a look that says  _how interesting._

"…Damn," Inoki says finally, not considering for a moment that she might've been bluffing. Her estimation of him goes down a couple of notches, though his hair is very nice. What she wouldn't give to be able to braid hers like that…

The thought is distracting. She shakes it off and resolves to ponder hair options when she doesn't have a fifteen-year-old chuunin to intimidate. "So, Yamanaka-san, do I need to call child services for protection, or will you be willing to lend me your aid in a project of mine?"

The dark-haired man she is relatively certain she knows to be Nara Shikaku snorts.

Inoki sets his lunch down and just stares. "You really are Keiko-senpai's kid."

"You say that like it's a surprise," Chie notes. "Children raised by parents often inherit their traits."

She does not mention that very few of hers actually came from Izumi Keiko, as she had actually been in possession of an identity prior to being housed with the admittedly fascinating and intelligent woman.

"Is that the kind of thing you write down?" Inoki asks for a moment, sidetracked, and when he gets a flat stare and two unimpressed looks from his companions, he puts his hands up in resignation. "Hey, the observation team's been curious for years. You were always quiet, Chie-chan, but…"

"Kaa-chan once told me that a person is best remembered by living for one's own sake," Chie says, taking pity on the way he trails into uncomfortable silence. Just because she doesn't entirely miss Keiko as a daughter should doesn't mean she can't be sorry for the woman's death. Sakumo is sorry enough for the both of them, anyways. Many times over. "I thought it prudent to honor her by doing just that."

Both Inoichi and Shikaku look at her with evaluating expressions—and no, no, nope, she wants no part in that. She shifts her stare to Inoki, willing him to respond.

"…Right," he says, looking abashed. "Well, Chie-chan, I don't suppose I can refuse…"

"No," she says, making the word crisp and sharp. Sharper than her smile, which she likes to think is very sharp indeed. "You may not."

Inoichi and Shikaku exchange looks—looks she doesn't like. Looks that speak of impending ninja nosiness.

"Say, Chie-chan," Inoichi says, smiling disarmingly. "Mind if I know what my subordinate's going to get up to?"

There's a non-choice if she's ever heard one. She bows her head politely. "I wouldn't dream of keeping it from you, Yamanaka-sama."

"Do call me Inoichi-san. I look for my grandfather whenever I hear Yamanaka-sama," Inoichi informs her with just a tad of conspiratorial indulgence, and she is once again distinctly reminded of how much her frame makes even ninja underestimate her. Or at least pretend to underestimate her.

Either way, she's got a lifetime's experience with exploiting that.

"As you wish, Inoichi-san. Now. My project will require some introduction…"

* * *

Inoichi clears his throat. Or makes a strangled noise, it's hard to tell. "You want to do what."

"He's my jounin-sensei," Chie points out.

Shikaku nods. "Yes. He's your jounin-sensei."

Chie thinks about this for a moment, tapping her fingers on the restaurant table, ignoring the eerily similar expressions of sheer disbelief on Inoichi and Inoki's faces. It could be considered audacious—well, scratch that, the heir to the Yamanaka clan is acting like she's suggested painting the man purple and sending him on a mercy mission to all the little old ladies that need groceries carried, it  _is_  audacious. Who is an eight-year-old  _genin,_  of all people, to try and help Hatake Sakumo? Oh, he might look like a dead man walking, but he should know better—he's avenged his fallen comrades many times over, saving countless others, and for that he is a hero. Heroes are strong. Heroes are pillars. Heroes do not break, and heroes do not need  _therapy._

It's unbelievable. Ridiculous. So altruistic and foreign to the ninja mindset that most would refuse to believe the idea came from Maito Gai, strange as he might be.

Chie lives for being ridiculous. She looks Shikaku in the eye, shoulders squared. "As a ninja of Konoha, it's my duty to look out for the best interests of my comrades, Nara-sama. I will be working closely with my jounin-sensei for some time, and Hokage-sama clearly had his reasons for calling back such an asset from the front lines to teach the next generation. His wellbeing is our concern. Am I naive? Perhaps. But as I see it, my teammates and I may be the only help Sensei can afford."

"Call me Shikaku-san," the man advises absently, looking pleased with her answer. Damn ninja and their silent tests of character. "Sounds like the Will of Fire is strong in you, kid. Inoichi?"

"Work on your poker face, Chie-chan," Inoichi says; he too seems strangely proud, though she's never spoken to the man prior to this. Chie quietly wonders at the sheer connectedness of the hidden village. She's never experienced anything quite like it, and though her life was short, she had managed to experience quite a bit in her time. "Come by T&I on your off days and Inoki can help you take some introductory psych classes. It's a bit soon for you to leap into intensive training, but it can't hurt for you to know the basics."

"But—seriously—you pick the biggest projects," Inoki informs her, shaking his head. His braid dangles with the motion. When he notices her watching it with an intent little smile, he tucks it away, eyeing her warily. "And my hair is off-limits. You mess up my hair, I'll find a way to foist you off on Mikoto-san."

Chie blinks.  _"…Uchiha_  Mikoto-san?"

She'd met Mikoto once in passing when Kushina whirled through the library, shouting something at the old librarian about fuinjutsu records and Uzumaki sealing workshops; Mikoto had come behind, smoothing over the librarian's ruffled feathers with words softer than silk and a private smile in her eyes. Chie knows exactly who Mikoto is, and Chie knows exactly where the deadly grace of her first son will come from.

…Certainly not her husband. Uchiha Fugaku is the perfect sort of detective, judging by the various investigations Chie has heard civilians gossip about. Hard-boiled, blunt, a tough sort of caring, intent on the truth and justice being done. Nothing like Mikoto, who wears her gentleness with purpose and girds herself with a warmth that some mistake for weakness. Chie admires that about her, wishes she had more time with Kushina so she could get to know her, but both women are in high demand with the way the war has intensified the further into Iwa they get.

Besides, her acquaintance with Kushina is mostly limited to their shared patronage of Ichiraku's and Kushina's markedly irreverent (though hilarious) advice for living on your own two feet. Chie finds herself entirely unwilling to abuse that unless they build something more substantial. Kushina is like the sun, and you do not bend its light to your whims.

Inoki nods. There's a challenging glint in his eyes—blue and lacking in the pupil department, much like the rest of his clan. "That's right. One of our finest. She's always busy."

Chie eyes him, deciding that she probably doesn't want to know exactly what Mikoto does in T&I. She can guess, anyways. And if she can guess, she can also guess that what Mikoto does in T&I might be very useful to her, indeed. "…We'll see."

"That wasn't an opportunity," Inoki sighs, ignoring the way Inoichi and Shikaku smirk at him.

* * *

"Hey, sensei," Chie says as the two of them observe Gai and Ibiki's weekly taijutsu-only sparring session. Sakumo makes a noise to affirm that he's heard her; she crosses her arms and considers Gai's form. It's practically perfect for a genin—really quite a shame that he seems determined to go into genjutsu. Or will his mind get changed somewhere down along the line? She has no way of knowing. "Did you know the honorable Senju Tobirama-sama?"

Sakumo glances over at her. "It depends on what you mean by 'know,' Chie-chan," he says after a moment, turning his attention back to the boys when Ibiki manages to score a hit on Gai's ribs and Gai laughs through the pain, giving his teammate a breathless congratulations before they both leap back.

"Were you acquainted with him?" Chie amends, eyes drifting to the patterns of fragmented sunlight the surrounding trees create as they shift with the wind. Manipulating someone's perception of those leaves would be an excellent way to practice setting up genjutsu subtly. She makes a mental note to mention it to Gai later.

"After a fashion," is the short reply.

Chie nods, undeterred. She'd expected this kind of resistance, especially considering her suspicions about where the Kakashi of the future's quieter, taciturn nature (under all the trolling—because of  _course)_  came from. Inoki had told her that it was common for people with Sakumo's issues to try and deflect any actual conversation from happening, and that's her story for her source on psychology. "I heard he was responsible for setting up nearly all of Konoha's infrastructure. How far does the truth of that go?"

"Where did you hear that?" Sakumo counters. A test. Ninja should never assume.

"The Academy textbook," she says, then smiles, because the truth is never simple. "And about fifteen different scholarly examinations of the economics of the Warring Clans Era found in the library."

Sakumo breathes out, a motion that could've been a chuckle in another reality. Instead, he just seems—tired. Exhausted. "You're very resourceful, Chie-chan."

"Everything in the library is a statement on politics, sensei. Primary sources are far more reliable than secondhand accounts." Chie shrugs, thinking of distant lands and long-forgotten political structures. She ignores the ache. It's inapplicable, anyway. "I'm mostly curious. I understand that record-keeping is inadvisable, but history helps us to understand where to go next."

"That's a very controversial view," Sakumo says, looking at her with a heretofore unseen spark of interest.  _Success._

"Anything for Konohagakure," Chie replies, glancing at him. If there's a thread of irony to the patriotism, well, she's the only one who could understand it. Nobody else has the frame of reference to know what being a child of many lands was like, to remember more hours spent traveling across oceans and mountains and wide open fields than one would remember the safety of home. There is no such thing as globalization in the Elemental Nations—that will only come in full later, decades down the road, and she finds herself wanting to live to see it. "I want to see this place survive. Maybe even flourish. Imagine a world where Konoha's children are free to grow up as children—where people can be expected to live long and happily."

Sakumo hums. "And you think history will help us to do it? You're quite an idealist, little Chie-chan."

"I'm not—" She shuts her mouth, looking at her hand. She  _is_  small.

Sakumo's smile is bare and slight. But it's a smile. She'll take it. "You won't be forever," he says, perhaps taking pity on her; the way he ruffles her hair seems to indicate that, at least. "But you are eight years old, you know. You'll have to survive first—and it's not impossible. I know a man whose longevity keeps surprising me, given that he tries to make friends of his enemies wherever he goes."

"Like Naruto," Chie says. She fixes her hair and pretends to miss the surprise that crosses Sakumo's face. "In the  _Tale of a Gutsy Shinobi."_

"Yes," Sakumo says thoughtfully. "Yes, quite like him, indeed."

He is thinking instead of reacting, interacting instead of putting up a wall. She has a long road ahead of her, but Gai's grateful smile as he goes for Ibiki's jugular with his foot cements the decision she made all those months ago.

Chie is silent for a bit. Then— "So, how involved was the honorable Senju Tobirama-sama in the establishment of Konoha's infrastructure?"

Sakumo gives her a dry look.

* * *

The first time Izumi Chie  _sees_  Hatake Kakashi, he is silent and pale and shuffling out of the Academy behind a man whose blond hair shines brighter than the sun. She nods to herself—another piece of the puzzle, check—and returns to trying to comprehend the terrifyingly massive loss of everything she's ever known and/or loved. She is no stranger to culture shock, but civilization shock, as she has decided to term it, is an entirely different matter.

The first time Izumi Chie  _meets_  Hatake Kakashi, Uchiha Obito is late for a meeting.

Chie pins the tiny Uchiha with a disapproving glare. Obito shuffles nervously, his sandaled feet tapping loudly on the bridge, hands locked behind his back. "…Please?"

"I know you're on a team, Uchiha-san. Please attend to your duty—which should, I believe, be training with them. If you can find me when you're off-duty, return then."

"But I can't find you!" Obito exclaims, waving his arms around like an excitable (if anxious) kitten. "You're impossible! Nobody knows who you are or what you do!"

_They don't need to know me, they don't like you,_  comes the thought, a long-forgotten strand of music she had loved dearly in her teenage years, and the shock of the memory resurfacing renders her momentarily mute. Obito looks down at his feet at her silence, then up again; he points at her with all the offended self-righteousness of an eight-year-old.

She wants to pet him.

"I'll find you, Izumi Chie," Obito vows, walking backward. "I'll find you if it's the last—"

"—Seriously, dumbass? We go all over town to find you and you're doing this?" comes a disdainful voice, and Hatake Kakashi drops out of the trees just in time to trip Obito and hop out of range of his flailing feet. The mask goes together with the furrowed brows and the deadened eyes to create a marvelous likeness to Sakumo, and Chie wants to laugh—not because she's amused. "I can't believe Minato-sensei made me fetch you."

"I'm not a dog!" Obito hollers, hopping to his feet.

Kakashi snorts. "You're right, you're not. Dogs are better than you are at keeping their balance."

Wow. Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Obito's pained grimace tells her that this is normal for them, and something about that… Chie sighs, drawing their attention. "Obito-kun. If you absolutely can't find me when you're off-duty, ask for me at T&I. My sempai should be able to help you."

"But why can't you just—"

"Ninja."

Obito scowls. It warms the cockles of her cold, deadened heart.

"Think of it as training," Chie tells him, amused. "As my teammate would say… anything is _youthful training_  if you believe hard enough."

Obito opens his mouth.  _Uhhhh,_  his expression says, but Kakashi beats him to it.

"Your teammate is  _Gai?"_  Kakashi asks with a mystified sort of horror, distracted from antagonizing Obito by this shocking revelation.

"You tell me, Hatake-kun. You live with him."

With that Chie gives the two of them a sharp nod and departs, intent on making it to the market district—and her favorite blacksmith—before noon. It might be her team's off-training day, but she still has work to do. (She'll never know how long afterward Kakashi just  _stares,_  half-offended and half-fascinated that an ostensible stranger knows so much about him.)


	3. Chapter 3

“You.”

 

Chie pays little attention to the intruder crouched on her windowsill as she moves about her tiny kitchenette, trying not to burn herself on the stove. If Kakashi intended to harm her, she’d probably already be dead—that’s the way of it with ninjas, she’s found. Anything they let you see them do is less intent to do it than it is a warning that they could. 

 

When Kakashi’s rather rude opener is ignored, he lets himself in and glares at her. “What are you doing?”

 

“…Cooking,” she says, one eyebrow raised as she pauses in the act of opening the oven. “I didn’t think the mask covered your eyes too, Hatake-san.”

 

“You know what I meant.”

 

She opens the oven and tries not to smile. He is, she reminds herself, a chuunin; very serious, very adult, and very definitely would not take to being patted on the head well. “Actually, Hatake-kun, I haven’t the slightest. All I know is that someone very rude invaded my home for no reason at all, and unless he sets the table, he’s not going to get any of the food I had to pay for with my own money.”

 

Kakashi is silent. That is either very good or very bad. Chie pulls the rather large pot out of the oven and manages to heft it onto the counter—cooking is very different when the world around you is so much taller—but before she can do anything else, she has a nosy, hungry, pre-adolescent boy peeking over her shoulder. He sniffs. “What is _ that?” _

 

Ah, that’s right—chili is a very uncommon dish in Konoha.

 

“Excellent question. If you set the table, you get to find out.”

 

Kakashi glares at her. She can feel it on the side of her face. After a moment, he looks away. “…Tell me where the cutlery is.”

 

“Cupboard on the right,” she says smartly, taking the rice off the stovetop and portioning it into two bowls. She does not comment on his use of the word  _ cutlery _ when something less arcane and more up-to-date would’ve been just fine, though she very much wants to poke fun at this strait-laced little boy with angry eyes and ridiculous hair. 

 

Seriously. Do people in Konoha start their children on creative applications of gel at an early age or something? Is she missing out by leaving her hair in its simple, side-swept, short style?

 

Dinnerware clinks behind her. She moves the pot to her small kitchen table and glances out the window. The sun is just now setting, casting the trees in brilliant shades of orange-bronze and gold. _ I wish,  _ a small part of her starts, and with the ease of long practice she ignores it. “Sit down,” she says mildly. “You might act like one, but you’re not a wolf, Hatake-kun.”

 

Kakashi pauses, staring at her. She stares back, a small, curious smile on her face.

 

Kakashi sits.

 

“Chili is a dish more commonly made among the merchants in the Land of Lightning,” Chie explains, dipping a ladle into the pot and pouring it on top of the rice. She repeats the motion and sets one bowl on each side of the table. “I picked it up from an old woman with less teeth than her smile would suggest. She’s been traveling the mountain paths in Lightning since long before you and I were born—perhaps longer than our parents have been alive, even.”

 

Kakashi stiffens. “…Parents.”

 

“We all have them, Hatake-kun. Mine are dead.” Kakashi has the good grace to look abashed, and Chie takes a bite of her chili to prevent herself from saying more. He might be a genius, but that doesn’t mean she needs to overload him. Besides—it took her time, but she’s gotten good enough at making a pot of chili that if she closes her eyes and dreams a little, it almost seems like she isn’t ten thousand worlds away from a life that once was.

 

Almost. Because Kakashi’s chakra still pricks at her senses, sleuthing as any ninja in an unfamiliar location would, and that inherently other sense of being is so far removed from anything in her previous experience that she can’t help but tune into it. She opens her eyes and sees his dull eyes staring back at her, mask up, food eaten save for a few grains of rice left in the bowl.

 

Staring matches, entertaining as they are for the unfortunate person who has to be in one with her, get tiring when your opponent has mastered the art of imitating a dead fish. Chie sighs. “Yes, Hatake-kun, he’s my sensei. Take three guesses as to why Gai didn’t tell you. You’re a smart boy. I’m sure you can figure  _ something _ out.”

 

“…Why is he…?” Kakashi starts, then falls silent.

 

It seems she has her answer as to whether or not Kakashi particularly cares for his father: so much so that his self-imposed exile is hurting him enough that he actually sought a stranger out for answers. She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Hatake-kun. I am a  _ genin.” _

 

“Exactly. You’re nothing special. So why…?” His brows are furrowed.

 

“Might I suggest,” Chie says delicately, “that it isn’t about  _ me? _ I am, as you said, nothing. A clanless orphan. My teammates both come from shinobi families, though not clans, exactly. None of us have special status, and each of us are primarily aided by our minds. Yet Hokage-sama chose Sakumo-sensei to teach us anyway. Regardless of what you may have heard about any sort of hero worship— _ which is a misunderstanding _ —I assure you that Ibiki, Gai and I are not people Hokage-sama would pull strings for, not in that sense. Does that help?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

Chie stands, deposits their bowls in the sink, and stands at the window. “Come here and look out the window.”

 

He joins her and looks. Above the treetops surrounding her apartment building and past two districts’ worth of buildings is the Hokage Mountain, gleaming in the light of the setting sun.

 

“The Hokage must represent the village,” she says, leaning against the windowsill with crossed arms. “The mountain is a symbol of that. I’m sure you know that. But what that means is that Hokage-sama must look out for the village’s best interests—its assets. Like it or not, your father is an asset. What do you do with a tool you can’t afford to lose, Hatake-kun?”

 

“…You find a way to repair it.”

 

Chie smiles and wonders how transparent her grim amusement is. “I can’t claim to know what the Hokage is thinking, of course. But I trust that he knows what he’s doing.” 

 

After that, Kakashi never quite leaves her alone again.

 

-

 

Chie eyes the papers dubiously. She glances at Ibiki, who is, as usual, completely unhelpful—all he does is raise an eyebrow at her. Not good enough. “Tell me again why you wanted a read-through of these files?”

 

“Routine check. Or a department move.”

 

“Your inflection on check tells me that you’re either lying or attempting to misdirect. Because I know you, you’re lying. Work on that, unless you want to obfuscate your meaning,” she advises, stretching her feet out on his coffee table. She is bruised and sore from their training in the morning; after long months and a mildly forced attendance to Gai’s birthday, she had managed to wrest a training regimen out of Sakumo that will eventually instill the same lethal grace in her that Uchiha Mikoto seems to possess naturally, and she looks forward to it. With _ the great eagerness of youth. _

 

Gai would be so proud, starting in as he has on his  _ shock sensei out of that stupor _ plan. A pity that he’ll never know she thought the words.

 

Ibiki’s mother, passing by the sitting room with a bag dripping with a strange liquid Chie doesn’t want to touch with a ten-foot pole (at least she doesn't  _ think _ so, judging by the smell), gives them an indulgent smile.

 

Ibiki nudges her feet off the table. “She’ll make Idate clean the room later. Don’t.”

 

“Why?” Chie asks, half-amused, half-worried.

 

Ibiki rolls his eyes. “Idate doesn’t understand that you want to clean the floor with the  _ mop _ , not yourself.”

 

“Meaning you have to watch him. Aw.” She relaxes subtly, eyes flickering over the contents of Ibiki’s papers. “Aren’t you two cute?”

 

“Shut it, Izumi.”

 

“You see, I’m jealous because I don’t have a family,” she says, irreverent, and never stops to consider the thread of truth to the statement. She’d had one, once, but it had been broken long before she’d known its value. Instead she finishes scanning the documents and looks up. “Interesting proposition.”

 

Ibiki watches her. She does not acknowledge it. “Very interesting. I hear you and Inoki-sempai had a discussion.”

 

Oh, he heard about that, did he? Chie favors him with an impertinent smile and reflects upon the fact that having access to a jumpy Yamanaka’s braid at any given moment is rather a useful thing when one just so happens to spot discrepancies in the T&I ledgers, even if one only happened to be going through said ledgers in the first place because of a spot of forbidden braid-tugging. If those discrepancies happened to lead to the discovery of more, and if it was eventually suggested that T&I relocate its offices to a more secure location for a bit while the mess was sorted out, well, it’s none of her business, now is it?

 

She does have her suspicions about the source of the errors, as would any good ninja involved with something as sensitive as Intel. But like any good ninja involved with something as sensitive as Intel, she knows that suspicions are best kept to oneself until one has evidence to back them up—and it is a matter of waiting. Give a man a noose and he will hang his dirty laundry on it first.

 

Sakatama-kun isn’t suited to be a desk ninja, anyways. It takes a very particular skill-set to be a desk ninja, and he is decidedly meant for the battlefield. Though… if he’s airing his discontent through the  _ ledgers _ and not, say, the training fields…

 

“You,” Ibiki says, with the air of one who would very much like to roll his eyes, “are ridiculously cagey.”

 

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean—said the pot to the kettle,” is Chie’s reply as she stands and stretches. She winces at the soreness in her arms, dances around Ibiki’s half-hearted motion to check for strain, and makes her way to the door. Ibiki follows, something like amusement in his eyes. “See you tomorrow.”

 

“Chie…” Ibiki starts, then shakes his head, thinking better of it. “See you tomorrow. Thanks for looking over those papers.”

 

She nods and departs without further fanfare, glad that the early afternoon hours still provide plenty of time for her to pick up her order from the blacksmith and hop over to Ichiraku’s before the sun really starts in on its dream of burning everything to ashes. Whoever named the Land of Fire was both unimaginative and remarkably apt; she suspects a historian, personally, but with how crazy things get when chakra and ninja involve themselves in something as mundane as cartography—well, she couldn’t possibly say for sure.

 

Chie smiles to herself as she meanders through narrow roads lined with homes, gaze idly drifting from one brightly-colored roof to the other. That Ibiki lived in such a predominantly civilian area of Konoha came as something of a surprise, but she recognized the junction he led her down earlier as the one most genin are supposed to use to get to the training fields. With wartime regulations in effect, nobody quite seems to care as much about making sure that genin get a mental map of Konoha’s interior; Ibiki had muttered something about his father insisting on doing things by the book when Chie had asked why he lived in the area, and recognizing the disgruntled pride of an eight-year-old boy when she saw it, she had tactfully backed off.

 

As it is, to get to her preferred marketplace quicker, she’s going to try something new today: cutting through the training fields. Fields Three through Seven are all fairly benign, but if she has to go through the swampy obstacle course that is Eight… Chie shudders, shaking her head. It isn’t worth risking what happened to Inoki (and his hair) last time he had tried to get through.

 

That she pushed him into the swamp is irrelevant. Inoki really should’ve seen it coming, and that lack of awareness is why he isn’t a field operative quite yet.

 


	4. Chapter 4

It's cold the day Sakumo shows up thirty minutes late for training with his jaw set and a bruise around his eye, the look on his face too blank for any real attempt at neutrality. Chie appreciates that he's trying to look neutral, though, even as Gai and Ibiki exchange looks and then nudge her forward when Sakumo remains silent, arms crossed, and gaze far away.

"Sensei," she says, drawing a sharp look from the man. It doesn't ruffle her. She's dealt with worse. "Is today the day?"

"Today is a day, Chie-chan," Sakumo counters, clearly not intent on making this easy.

Chie bites back a sigh. "Every day is a day, sensei, except maybe solar eclipses. I think. Technically, they'd classify—whatever. We don't get a C-rank every day, sensei."

Sakumo looks the three of them over, finally seeming to realize that Gai and Ibiki are present and watching him with the kind of quiet concern they think they're good at hiding.

"No," he says finally, uncrossing his arms and rolling them. One of his shoulder joints pops; which one is impossible to tell, but the way he is, either he's dislocated it recently or he'd slept on it wrong the night before and is only now getting around to warming up. Considering the bruise, Chie's willing to bet on the former. "Not today. Something came up, and we'll be done early today. But I will be running you through some exercises and getting you started on specializations, so why don't we get to it? Start with your legs."

"Got it."

* * *

The usual warmups start off silent and tense, but Chie manages to get Gai going on about the virtues of stylized lunchboxes as he and Ibiki complete their final set of push-ups and begin to move on to an exercise that's more of a game than anything—hopping across a series of posts set up in their clearing, dodging the posts that taper into spikes. She's only just ahead of that, taking a breath and getting ready to channel chakra to her feet to try walking up a tree, when Sakumo taps her on the shoulder and nods to the other side of the clearing.

A tad bemused, but nonetheless willing given that Konoha is a military dictatorship and he's her direct authority, Chie follows him over and stands at ease as he stares off into the distance, gathering his thoughts.

If she said she wasn't curious about this, she would be lying. Sakumo hardly speaks one-on-one to them on a good day beyond the necessary instruction—on a bad day, they mostly finish their warmups and end up sparring until he disappears off somewhere and they are dismissed for the day.

"Chie-chan," he says finally, and Chie keeps her expression smooth. "Is there a reason Yamanaka-sama sent me a permission form to allow one of my genin to join the T&I interns on their rotation for 'special observation and instruction'?"

Chie bites her tongue on her initial response, something along the lines of  _it's highly possible, Sensei, if only you would look at the name on the form to confirm things for yourself,_  and instead she meets his eyes squarely. "Yes, Sensei. Yamanaka-sama graciously offered the opportunity at a chance meeting, and I didn't think it prudent to refuse him. He said it could be useful to my team—"

"—and useful on your sensei," Sakumo says wryly. His eyes flicker from the piece of paper he fished out of his pocket while she was talking to her face, searching for clues. And weakness too, probably. Ninjas.

Chie says nothing.

He sighs, for a moment looking far more exhausted than a man his age really should. "I'll allow it." There's a but that hangs in the air after it, so she waits, and the faintest hints of what could be a smile curl about his mouth in approval. It fades too quickly, but that doesn't bother her like it would Gai if Gai could really see his face at the moment. "On one condition, Chie-chan."

"Of course, Sensei."

"No observing torture sessions until you've gone through the official training for it in the pre-chunin preparatory period. There's a reason nobody tells the younger genin that T&I is a department." His eyes begin to get that glassy look again, sliding into the far-off and the unknown, sights no man should have to see, and when he shakes himself to see her watching he only looks tired, as he did before.

"Thank you for your concern, Sensei," Chie says after a moment, feeling the awkwardness of the protracted silence a little more than is probably strictly necessary.

Sakumo just shakes his head. "Get back to work. I know you've been pretending to be worse at the tree-walking exercise than you really are—show me your best work, and we'll see how you can improve from there."

Somewhat chastened, Chie nods and makes her way back to the trees that Gai and Ibiki have begun running up. Ibiki gives her the side-eye, but otherwise says nothing.

Gai smiles at her. "Chie-chan! Let us give it our best effort!"

"I was thinking of taking a nap, myself." She surveys the skies and then the clearing. Ibiki sighs.

Unfathomably, Gai laughs.

* * *

Daytime is busy enough to keep her occupied, with hard physical work at practically all hours only being further accompanied by the grueling mental practice of calculating and re-calculating the effects she's having on her current environment. Despite all that Chie has said and done already, the world still feels half-unreal to her—a waking dream, a passing shadow, one filled with sights and sounds and scents dulled out by the grey edges of something that simply can't be reality, no matter which way one cuts it.

Keeping a mental tally of everything she's noticed, despite her hopes, hasn't really helped matters at night. When it's not wondering whether or not some unfriendly ninja will break into her unfeasibly-trapped apartment (it's hard to get quality with the kind of budget she's on) despite the unlikelihood of it all, it's the dreams she has of the world she can never return to.

Not full memories, not now—those have begun to fade, and she wrote them all down when her hand was shakier and her time was mostly free. She'll always have those in some form. No, what devastates more than anything is the vague fractals of location and light and the feel of the air that coalesce together and form places she had been to before the end, all mashed up in ways that cast strange shadows on the ground where there ought to be nothing but sunlight reflected off blue waves and white sand.

"For a ninja, you're not very good at hearing people in your own house."

Very carefully, Chie does not jump out of her skin. Instead, she peers into the darkness only to see the sullen eyes of Hatake Kakashi watching her from a corner—not his face, no, because the mask covers most of it.

She remains silent for a few moments. Then— "What the fuck?"

"Pardon?" He looks shocked, but at least half of it is affectation.

Chie stares right back at him staring at her. "Do you know what time it is?"

"Yes," he says without missing a beat. "It's two twenty-three AM."

"Is there a reason you're in my apartment at two twenty-three AM, Hatake-kun?"

Kakashi shrugs. "Your traps aren't very good."

"That's an explanation of how you got in, not a reason."

"You know I could kill you where you sit, right now?" he asks instead of responding to her comment. "It'd be really easy. And I have a million options. All I'd have to do is pick one of them and you'd be dead."

Chie pinches the bridge of her nose. "Yes, Hatake-kun. Then the Uchiha Police Force would find my body, an investigation would ensue, and given that there's probably a patrolman who noticed you enter, you'd be a prime suspect for the case. Do you have a point?"

"You're mad." He sounds  _surprised._

"Hatake-kun, it's two twenty-three AM."

"Two twenty-six AM."

"Sure. If you have a point, get to it. I'd like to go back to not sleeping well in peace." This is really just her luck—the snotty-nosed genius ninja boy got offended by the stars aligning against her and decided to hound her constantly, she ended up here instead of, oh, somewhere else, anywhere else, she was made to enroll in military service against her will...

Kakashi looks at her like she's an idiot, which might be fair at this point, really. "You need to guard yourself better. I could've killed you."

"You're you," Chie points out. "You're unreasonably skilled. I'm a genin in training and the enemy is nowhere near my doorstep yet. They won't deploy me unless they're reasonably certain I won't be a risk in the field, and they don't assess that until the pre-chunin preparatory period, which you skipped by getting a field promotion. And as far as I know, no one in Konoha except you has threatened to kill me in my sleep yet."

"So you know you're badly-defended, but you choose not to do anything about it?"

Chie can feel the urge for violence rising up inside her. Instead of submitting to it, she grits her teeth. "I  _choose_  to _believe,_  based on my assessment of my station and my surroundings, that it's very unlikely that another nin will decide to break into a lowly genin's home and kill me."

"But I could've."

"You seem to have an issue with the concept of my unimportance to the grand scheme of things," she drawls, trying very hard not to go for the kunai under her pillow like part of her dearly wants to.

The fact that the conditioning is working on her and violence is beginning to seem normal is something she'll have to contemplate later; right now, her top priority is getting Kakashi to fuck off into the great unknown outside of her window. And possibly to look into whether or not T&I offers basement apartments near their location.

Kakashi twitches. "You're my father's apprentice!" he squawks, _finally,_  and Chie gives him a very unimpressed look.

"I wasn't aware that Gai and Ibiki were not a part of my  _initial genin team,"_  she says.

He glares at her, suddenly next to her bedside, and she leans away from him. Whatever mission he's been out on, he definitely forgot to take a shower.

 _Some things never change,_  she thinks, her expression flat as the smell reminds her of the time Gai had decided to skip a shower after the hardest day of their routine and showed up bright and early for the next one without considering what that might do to his teammates and his very olfactorily sensitive teacher.

"You're different." Whatever else he was about to say, he instead falls silent, and that is a trait the Hatake family seems to share.

Chie tries several times to construct a response to this and ultimately ends up sighing again, feeling a very particular headache somewhere behind her temples. "I'm very flattered that you think so, Hatake-kun."

"Not like that," he clarifies, his eyes going wide in a hilarious moment of uncharacteristic earnestness. "I mean... I've seen it. He treats you differently. He's teaching Gai and Morino-kun, but he's assessing you."

"Hatake-kun," she starts, then stops, thinking better of further taunting.  _This whole thing is exhausting._  "That might be true, but why does it matter to you?"

"I..."

This younger Kakashi is so unlike anything she had expected—getting distracted by petty taunts, finding himself at a loss for words... or maybe not, she thinks, finally noticing the way he's watching her.  _Are you stupid_  is a pretty common attitude from him anyways, if Obito was anything to judge by, but the expression on his face is the closest to genuine, hurt offense she's seen yet.

"Is there a reason it affects you?" she asks, feeling rather lost and unsure of what to do about it. "Is there something I'm—not getting, here?"

Kakashi is silent for a long, long period of time. "...He's  _my_  father," he says, so quietly she has to strain to hear it.

 _Ah,_  she thinks. And maybe it's that she's had one father already, but she doesn't quite think she needs another.

"If you want," she says, just as softly as he spoke, feeling just as ridiculous with her small body and small hands as she did the first time around, "I can help you talk to him again. Gai and Ibiki and I, we just want to help him. Like I told you—the Hokage knows what he's doing when he gives the final say on which units are assigned to which teacher—"

But Kakashi is already shaking his head. "Not yet," he's whispering. "Not yet."

What a sad, strange child, this genius boy, growing up in a war with all the people who should be watching him fighting somewhere on the front lines. Even the ones at home.

"I won't force you," she tells him, drawing the blankets around herself. A cover if she needs to do some hand-signing for emergency jutsus, yes, but primarily a small comfort for herself.

Kakashi just nods. He doesn't move or stop looking somewhere past her shoulder into the darkness, but he does blink.

Chie shuffles her blankets around, taking the opportunity to kick the thin undersheet to the foot of the bed and only keep the top one near her. "I'd like to get back to sleep sometime tonight..."

"...Oh." He blinks again. "Right, uh, I... bye!"

The window shades flutter in the wake of his hasty exit. Chie sits back in her bed and runs a weary hand over her face.  _I don't get paid enough for this,_  she gripes to herself.  _I don't even really get paid to manage ninja emotions! I volunteered!_

* * *

Still somewhat preoccupied by the strangeness of her night visitor, Chie meanders through the village in the early evening of the next day. Her pace is slow and unhurried. Her body hums, the whole of it a contented sigh in her mind, her skin singing under the sun. Training today had been a blur of motion, keeping her and teammates on their guard as Sakumo taught them the ins and outs of dodging—the number one skill to keep them alive.

 _A ninja that gets hit in a warzone is a dead ninja,_  Nakamura-sensei had told them in the Academy.

He had been right. Her own mother in this place had, after all, died saving Sakumo from getting hit—taking the hit for him instead.

In another time and place, that didn't happen.

She could be bitter about it, she supposes. Certainly Sakumo had seemed to expect it from her at first, and the Third Hokage had found her professional curiosity about the Hatake family wildly amusing instead and wasted no time in exposing him to the truth. Izumi Keiko had been a rock-solid teammate and colleague, or so she's heard, and as a mother to Chie... she had certainly known how to encourage her daughter's intellect.

A part of her does wonder what her life might look like now if Keiko had survived.

But the dead are the dead, gone to their eternal rest, and the only way to honor their memory is to let them be. Carry their memory with you, but let them be.

Yes. That is one of the only ways to function in a world past the worlds, in a time past time, when everything but yourself feels removed from the green of the trees and the fierce blue of the sky—

Chie blinks and shakes her head a little, averting her eyes from where they had gotten stuck on a little sun-dappled patch of shade next to one of the public benches. She hadn't really noticed herself stopping, and thankfully no one is staring at her—one of the few benefits of living in a military village is that everyone has their demons—so she nods to herself and continues on her way to the T&I department.

* * *

"Alright, everyone. Starting today, we're going to ramp things up a bit."

There's something different about Sakumo today, something in his face and his eyes that looks a little less dead, and it leaves Chie nonplussed but delightfully surprised. She, Gai, and Ibiki are lined up in front of him, all of them at attention, and Sakumo's arms are crossed. Ibiki nudges her. She ignores it.

Sakumo eyes them sternly. Ibiki moves his arms back into position.

"The war is not over yet," Sakumo says after another moment. "But someday soon, it will be. None of you will be seeing the front lines before you make chunin. Even with the mandatory preparation period being shortened, it's very likely that you won't be seeing them at all."

Chie does exchange a glance with Ibiki and Gai this time. "The war is ending, sensei?"

"I didn't say that." Sakumo's voice is mild.

"But you know something," Ibiki pipes up. Looking at the glint in his eye, Chie is reminded again that he will one day be hell to contend with. "Something is—or will—be happening soon. You want to prepare us for it."

"We should celebrate with a lunch of celebration!"

A beat.

"That's a fun idea, Gai," Chie volunteers when it looks like neither Sakumo or Ibiki are going to respond. Gai beams proudly at her.

All part of the plan, she reminds herself. Going along with Gai doesn't make her feel any worse about anything—in fact, given the right situation, it can be a very profitable venture—but the fact that in any other dynamic she would have left dealing with the awkward bits to someone else... a part of her dearly misses that.

"Let's not celebrate right away, or leap to any conclusions," Sakumo says, a hint of wryness leaking through into his tone. "I said someday. Today, I test you on your dodging skills."

"Scatter!" Chie yells as Sakumo kindly takes his time pulling out his kunai, which for a ninja amounts to making the motion visible to the human eye, and proceeds to do his level best to bury them in a storm of whistling metal.

* * *

By the time they finish, they all have more than a few new surface-level cuts decorating their skin. The only semi-serious injuries end up being one laceration on Chie's upper arm and Ibiki's shoulder, where the friction of the handle of one kunai had made a well-aimed hit a significantly more painful one by virtue of also skimming the surface layer of his skin. Gai had done the best of the three of them at dodging serious injury, the raw control over his own body already beginning to display itself in their daily life, and she makes a mental note to study a few taijutsu scrolls soon to see if there's anything he'll find useful in them.

"I'll just get this treated at home," Ibiki tells them, looking at his bloody shoulder and torn sleeve with no real emotion on his face. Sakumo had staunched the flow with what he had on hand, which had ended up being some old supplies in the travel-sized medkit he kept in some secret pocket, but the wound itself looks like it hurts; there's a just-barely-too-stubborn set to Ibiki's jaw that helps show it, too. He may be a bastard already, but he's young and pint-sized yet.

Sakumo nods. "Take care on your way home."

That's new.

Gai and Chie exchange glances.

"Sensei! I'll accompany Ibiki to his home!" Gai exclaims, latching onto Ibiki's uninjured arm with all the earnestness he can muster. "Come, Ibiki! Let us go!"

"Yeah, yeah, alright..."

"Sensei." Chie waits until Ibiki has begrudgingly allowed Gai to drag him off in the direction of the southern markets. Sakumo has lost some of the liveliness he had at the start, but thankfully he doesn't just disappear, like an older Kakashi might have. "Would you mind taking me to the clinic around here? I don't have suitable medical supplies at my apartment."

"You don't?" He frowns at her.

Chie coughs politely. "I'm on something of a budget."

"Ah." Sakumo puts his hands in his pockets, something she hasn't seen him do before, and nods to the other path out of the clearing in the field. "I'll take you. I haven't been to the one around here, but I know where it is."

"Thank you, Sensei." She trots along behind him, waiting until they're a comfortable distance away from the narrow path and a ways back into the village proper to walk slightly to the left and behind of him, as is expected of a student.

She thinks. She isn't actually sure whether the stuffy old etiquette book on the cultural customs of the Warring Clans still applies in the present day, but it's better to be safe than sorry.

Even so, she completely dashes antiquated propriety when she opens her mouth again. "Sensei, is something different?"

"What do you mean, Chie-chan?"

"You look different." She waits a beat. "And you told Ibiki to be careful on his way home."

Sakumo hums. "Maybe I'm a teacher who's just looking out for his students. That's normal, isn't it?"

"But you aren't just any teacher," she says.

He laughs a little, a short, unhappy thing that dies before it really gets going. The forever-distracted part of her wants to yank on his hair, which was long to start with and has grown longer since he started teaching them, but he's far from being as easy pickings as Inoki is. She'd be gone in a split second. "No, I suppose I'm not."

"Did something happen?"

"Are you snooping?" Sakumo asks her, turning and raising an eyebrow at her as pedestrians pass them by, going to and from their workplaces for the lunch hour in this district. Chie, for her part, does recognize the look he's giving her—ninja to ninja, it's a silent  _why are you being so brazen instead of seeking out that information on your own?_ —but this man is her sensei, and she figures that teamwork is all about trust, right?

So Chie shrugs. "I don't mean to pry into your personal life, Sensei." Unsaid, but hopefully heard:  _I do care about you, though._

He gives her a long look. When she doesn't waver, he sighs. "An old friend paid me a visit, that's all. Come on, the clinic should be just around this corner."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, everyone! I'd like to assure you all that In Triplicate is not dead. I've had a lot going on in my personal life that hasn't left me with a lot of time to work on live updates, but I'm building up a significant backlog so that when the time comes, I'll only have to send it through a few rounds of editing before I can post it. :) Hopefully I'll be able to put out another update before nearly a year has passed!
> 
> At any rate, let me know what you think in the reviews—note that this story is planned out and does have a projected end point that I don't plan on changing just yet, and that it includes the possibility of side stories should anyone be interested. Here's a question for you all: what do you think of Tobirama? Was he the God of Paperwork in paper-nin legend?


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